Randolph Caldecott: 'Lord of the Nursery'

Oresko Books, London, first edition, 1976. Laminated wrappers, large 8vo, 30 cm,. 104 pp, over 100 ills (9 in colour). From the blurb: "During his short life Randolph Caldecott became one of the most popular and respected illustrators of his era. Working at the height of Victorian Aestheticism and industrialisation, be turned for inspiration to nature and the stable rural society of eighteenth-century England. ...Rodney Engen charts Caldecott's life from his humble beginnings in a small village and his early life as a bank clerk. His talent soon brought him commissions from the Graphic, Illustrated London News and The Pictorial World and he was a regular contributor to these and other periodicals throughout his career. Caldecott's most important contribution to English illustration, however, was his famous series of children's Picture Books, superb editions of illustrated nursery rhymes and stories, engraved and colour-printed by that master of his trade, Edmund Evans. The House that Jack Built and John Gilpin were published in 1878, the first of sixteen titles to appear over a period of eight years. The Picture Books were subsequently published in many editions, winning Caldecott international renown and earning him the epithet 'Lord of the Nursery'. In this volume Rodney Engen has brought together for the first time a comprehensive selection of Caldecott's work, including not only his best-known illustrations to books and periodicals, but also his less familiar oil paintings and sculpture, together with a complete catalogue of Caldecott's oeuvre". Page edges agetoned, otherwise Very Good.